Essential Oils for Beginners

A little under two years ago I attended a blogging conference that would change my life. Not because of what I learned about blogging, but because I would be introduced to Essential Oils. My son was eight weeks old and I had recently been given the go ahead to travel after several weeks of gestational hypertension (post-delivery high blood pressure). I was struggling with several other health issues at the time, and I was introduced to Young Living Essential Oils.

Over the course of the next year and I have I never realized how EO’s, as I call them, would drastically change my life and my perspective on health and wellness. I had never been someone to give much thought to how to improve my health, organic foods, or green living in general. However, my path to wellness started with my essential oils.

I also desperately wanted to find a way to bring non-toxic cleaners into my home, and I had already posted about many DIY homemade cleaners that used essential oils. I never dreamed that I would help over 300 other families grow in their oily journey.

Essential Oils for Beginners

What does Therapeutic Grade mean?

Once I had started using Young Living essential oils, I learned that I could use some of their oils topically, by diffusing in the air, and by even taking internally if necessary. However, I was still purchasing some local oils at the time that had warnings on the labels like “not for internal consumption” or “for external use only.” I also noticed that some had expiration dates, and Young Living oils were very different. They were listed as Therapeutic Grade, so I wanted to know more about

“The potential danger of an essential oil is generally relative to its level or grade of purity. Many essential oils are designed exclusively for their aroma-therapeutic quality; these essential oils generally should not be applied directly to the skin in their undiluted or “neat” form. Some can cause severe irritation, provoke an allergic reaction and, over time, prove hepatotoxic. Non-therapeutic grade essential oils are never recommended for topical or internal use.” –Source

After speaking with my friend at the conference, she introduced me to Young Living essential oils and explained their Seed to Seal guarantee. I visited the website, read all I could about the company and realized that not all essential oil companies were created equal. The label “Pure Essential Oil” can be placed on a product if as little as 5% of the product actually contains pure essential oil. Also, these oils may be chemically distilled or even purchased through a broker. I didn’t want anything in my body that was not the purest form of essential oil I could find.

Companies are also allowed to use chemical solvents, high pressure, and high-heat to extract the oils from the plant. The old adage “you get what you pay for” has never been more applicable. Knowing that the company where I purchase my essential oils has control of the entire process from the seed being planted in the ground to the actual bottling of the oils gives me peace of mind.

Questions You Need to Ask

Here are a few questions to ask yourself before purchasing essential oils from any company.

Does the company own its land and fields where it plants its own crops that will be used in the essential oils? Are these fields pesticide free? How do they manage weed and pest control?

Can the company guarantee that they have not used high heat, high pressure, or chemical solvents to extract the oils?

Does the company have it’s own testing laboratory with qualified staff to test the quality of the essential oils?

If their supplier makes a mistake in the distillation or harvesting processes that results in an inferior grade of oil, does that supplier sell the oil anyway or do they discard it?

Do they know if their crops were harvested at the peak time for the best quality of oil?

Do they only bottle the first distillation, or do they distill over and over again for a less quality oil?

These are just a few questions that I would want answered before I started utilizing therapeutic grade oils on my family.

Why I Continue to Choose Young Living

I have friends who I know personally who have been able to visit several of the Young Living farms. I have seen the actual inside of their migrants quarters, which are beautiful log cabins, where each migrant area has its own hot tubs. When a company practices health even for its workers, then you know that it is a company where you can invest your time and energy.

How I use Young Living Essential Oils

We have a twenty minute video below we would love for you to watch about how we use young living essential oils in our home. Some of my favorite ways to use my essential oils are in my anti-aging moisturizer, our bedtime rub (our friends and family rave about this), this homemade hand sanitizer, with these wool dryer balls, diaper cream, and more (check them all out here). The video below goes into depth about how they can be used. We also have a private Facebook group for members of our oily family, where they can ask questions and learn daily.

How to Purchase Young Living Oils

The easiest way to purchase Young Living essential oils is to become a wholesale member, because you save 24% on everything that you purchase, versus retail (when you choose the “customer” option, you will pay 24% more than if you are a wholesale member. I love the fact that you don’t have to make a purchase or buy a certain amount every month. The only requirement to maintain your wholesale membership is to place a 50PV (similar to $50) order within twelve months of your sign-up date. Also, you do not have to sell anything to be a wholesale member. Also, wholesale members have access to our private Facebook group with over 150 members out of the 300+ families that we help on their oily journey.

You will need to pick a starter kit first. All of Young Living’s Premium Starter Kits are the best possible deal, because you get eleven oils (5ml bottles) plus your diffuser that comes with a one-year guarantee. This is a great way to start your oily journey and grow your collection of oils quickly. Plus, we have several free resources you will receive as well when you purchase a Premium Starter Kit (Basic Starter Kits are not eligible for the freebies).

You will also get your choice of one of these four diffusers:

4. Decide on the starter kit you would like. The best value is the $150 because you get several extra 5ml. oils + a diffuser!BONUS Step: (COMPLETELY Optional!) If you would like to earn a bonus oil this month, then get your order total up to 190 PV (different products have different point values). You could get the Start Living With Everyday Oils kit and automatically have 100 point value… then you’ll just need 90 more points to get the bonus oil. For example, you could grab an extra bottle of Thieves Oil at 33.75 points, 15 ml bottle of Lavender at 23.5 points, 15 ml bottle of Lime at 11 points, and the 14.4 ounces of Thieves Household Cleaner at 22 points (just pour one capful of the concentrated Thieves cleaning solution into a spray bottle and it lasts for a really long time!) All of those items will bring your total points up to $190.25 which will qualify you to get the one BONUS oil! (This step is completely optional!)

Make sure to comment below if you purchase your kit. We currently work with over 300 oily families around the country.

Frequently Asked Questions:

Does signing up make me a “distributor”?

Nope! You are not required to sell anything at all to anyone. When you become a wholesale member, you get a special link that you can share with friends and get credit from their purchases, but there are no minimum sales amounts at all. In fact, 90% of the wholesale members in Young Living don’t do the business side at all. They are buying from Young Living because of the quality alone.

Am I required to make a minimum purchase each month?

There are absolutely NO minimum monthly purchase requirements. To remain a wholesale member, you have to make $50 worth of purchases per year to keep your membership. But if there’s a year that you don’t make a $50 purchase, you can reinstate your wholesale membership discount by just placing a $50 order.

If you do find yourself making regular purchases each month, then Young Living has a rewards program (called Essential Rewards) where you can make a nice percentage back in product credit each month on all of your purchases. So that’s a neat program to join if you find that you *want* to purchase regularly (but it’s not a requirement for being a wholesale member).

Why should I buy from Young Living instead of other essential oils companies?

It does seem like a new essential oils company pops up every day, doesn’t it?

I can’t speak to the quality of other companies, but I can say that Young Living was the only company in my research of essential oil companies that could answer all of my questions about purity in a way that was satisfactory to me.

Young Living was the only company that has their own farms (in the regions where the plants should be grown), could absolutely guarantee that no pesticides or herbicides were used in the growing of any of their oils (they use essential oils for pest control and they do all of the weeding by hand), has their own testing equipment (they do both in-house and 3rd party testing, and use many different testing methods not just GC/MS which only tests for certain chemicals, not whether those chemicals are synthetic or not), and only uses the first distillation of oils instead of adding chemicals to get more out of the plant.

Young Living also was the only company that was directly in charge of essential oil farming operations. Every other company I researched goes through some kind of an “oil broker” to buy their oils. They have to trust that the oil broker is telling the truth, who has to trust that the essential oil distilleries are telling the truth, who have to trust that the farmers are telling the truth about what they say they are doing.

With Young Living, you just have to trust one company instead of several.

I feel like it’s a trust step either way (anyone could be lying) but I felt the most comfortable trusting Young Living since they are a full-disclosure company. ANYONE can visit the farms, participate in the harvesting and distillation, view the Young Living labs, and see the entire process. That’s not an option with any other company.

Does Young Living only sell essential oils?

The answer to this one was suprising to me when I first got my starter kit! Young Living actually has an entire line of personal care products, supplements, meal replacements, energy drinks, and more! Almost every product incorporates essential oils (for example, frankincense is absolutely wonderful in facial products), but there’s a wide variety of products available.